


The "Morgana Tortured Us With Snakes" Club

by fishoutofcamelot



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, No Beta We Die Like Elyan, Reincarnation, merlin uses they/them pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27856873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishoutofcamelot/pseuds/fishoutofcamelot
Summary: Elyan and Gwaine have a conversation that's 1500 years overdue.
Relationships: Elyan & Gwaine (Merlin)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 60





	The "Morgana Tortured Us With Snakes" Club

On the bright side, at least Elyan was finally free from the soul-crushing mediocrity that had defined the first 24 years of his life. 

On the not-so-bright side, he now had the memories of a mildly traumatic past life cramming its way into his head at Mach 5. Give it up for Migraine City, y’all. 

With great effort, Elyan staggered through a mental haze of medieval warfare and up to the medicine cabinet. Dad’s old fish oil, a bottle of cough medicine, Gwen’s e-pills - aha! Tylenol. The generic Winco stuff, sure, but it would do for now. 

_“- yes, Elyan, Prince Arthur of Camelot -”_

_“- And the winner of this year’s science fair is -”_

_“- His name is Merlin -”_

_“- So how’s your new job at the grocery store -”_

_“- Arise Sir Elyan, Knight of Camelot -”_

_“- Ah, I’m Ethan Smith -”_

_“ - Elyan - “_

_“- Ethan -”_

“Elyan!”

His hands were shaking. Pills were all over the floor. Elyan blinked several times before his vision cleared up, before he was able to make sense of where and _when_ he was. 2019, USA, the kitchen. With some shaggy-haired prick standing in the doorway, and what was his name again?

“Gwaine,” he breathed, leaning his wobbly weight into the edge of the counter. It was sharp and it dug into his ribs, but frankly with everything else going on that was the least of his problems.

The aforementioned prick, Gwaine - but sometimes Gavin Croft, depending on the century - smirked. A lovable asshole in their past life, and this one was no different. Because the whole multiple-lives, reincarnation thing was real, apparently. 

Which meant his Aunt Tess was right, and Elyan now owed her 40 bucks. Great.

Gwaine’s smiles had always been lively, passionate, clever. Whether grinning at his own smarmy wit, or reveling in the presence of his friends, or simply eating an apple pie. Gwaine’s smiles, regardless of circumstance or century, were almost always emotional.

Not this one, though. This time, his smile was more withdrawn. Subtle. Knowing, even.

“Ah, so you’ve got your memories back too, I take it,” Gwaine said. The corner of his eyes crinkled, unusually void of mirth.

Elyan let out a long sigh, rubbed a hand down his face. “Something like that. Still trying to sort everything out, though. It’s all…” He gestured erratically at the side of his face. “...jumbled.”

Gwaine pulled a coffee mug from one of the top cabinets as if he lived here. And oh right, he sorta did, because _Gavin_ and _Ethan_ were high school friends and _Ethan’_ s couch had been _Gavin’_ s favorite place to crash ever since _Gavin’_ s parents kicked him out for being gay. 

But were they still Gavin and Ethan, or now Gwaine and Elyan? Were Gavin and Ethan ever real people to begin with, or just pointless instars inhabiting bodies not meant to be their own, holding the seat for Gwaine and Elyan to come along and give them purpose? 

Which life mattered more? Which life mattered to _him_ more?

“Yeah,” Gwaine said with an oddly dispassionate snort. “It’s kinda trippy, huh.”

Elyan squinted at him, bridge of his nose pinched between two fingers. “How did you and Lancelot ever get used to this?”

Gwaine never bothered to respond, and Elyan never bothered to repeat himself. They stood in silence as Gwaine filled up his mug at the sink. A Christmas mug. That one Gwen had made in her pottery class, and you couldn’t hold it from its needle-thin handle or else the whole thing would snap. 

While Gwaine hopped up to sit on the counter, Elyan bent over to pick up a few pills off the ground. Not all of the ones that had been spilled, though. Just enough to kill the headache for a few hours. 

In another life, he would’ve snatched the mug out of Gwaine’s hands with an impish grin and chugged the water down himself, with Gwaine laughing boisterously and reaching to grab it back, and both of them would tug it back and forth until it shattered on the ground. Then Merlin would come in and grumble about how they had better clean up the mess before Arthur came along and made _his servant_ do it.

In _this_ life, just a few months ago, much the same would’ve happened, only instead of Merlin coming in it would have been Gwen, not quite scolding them but giving them a disapproving look that was probably a thousand times worse than harsh words could ever say.

But this time? Now? Elyan pulled out a glass of his own, and Gwaine scooted aside to give Elyan more space as he filled up his glass with lukewarm sink-water. Neither of them said anything. Neither of them amended the stiff silence, but rather allowed their frazzled, aching minds to melt into it. 

Undead armies. Magic swords. Queens in towers. Dragons. Wyverns. Knights and sorcerers and kings. Gwen holding his head in her lap, and everything is dark, and his life is leaving his body but he has to hold on just for a little longer, he promised he’d never _leave her_ again and yet -

Within moments the meds and water slipped down his throat like it was some kinda slip-n-slide. If he stood still enough, would he be able to feel the Tylenol dissolve in his stomach and flow into his blood? If he stopped thinking long enough, would he be able to feel it pry all those nasty memories out of his conscious mind? 

Probably not. But it was the thought that counted.

“So,” Elyan said, voice shakier than he’d have liked it to be. One by one his knuckles rapped against the linoleum countertop, the sensation reminding him of the proper year. 2019. Not 539. They didn’t have linoleum back in the 6th century. “Reincarnation, huh.”

Gwaine shrugged in lieu of a response. 

“And you have Lancelot have both been dealing with this…”

Gwaine took a sip from the mug, gaze distant. “About a week now. That’s when Merlin found us, zapped our memories back into place. You know how it goes.”

For better or worse, Elyan _did_ know. Merlin had done the same to him barely a few hours ago. 

Right, _Merlin._ Elyan’s surrogate little sibling (one of many, to be honest) and one of his closest friends. Who apparently had magic. Which was evil but not really, depending on who you asked. And it just so happened that Arthur Pendragon - y’know, that whiny punk from _Shrek the Third_? - was the one people usually asked, and it also just so happened that Arthur was a massive jerk about the matter.

Well, until his supposed eleventh-hour change of heart anyway. But Elyan had died before then, so he’d believe it when he saw it. Or, he supposed, when he struck up a chat with Arthur’s reincarnation.

Hindsight being 20/20, yeah he was a little bit pissed off at Arthur. What with the whole banishing Gwen thing. In the 6th century he was upset about it, understandably so, but he also managed to forgive Arthur because banishment was more merciful than execution right? But now, with all the grace and knowledge provided to him by something called the 21st century, Elyan figured that neither of those options were even remotely ‘merciful’. 

What was it they said on that one Buzzfeed show Gwen always made him watch with her? “It’s easy to condemn from our point in history - and so we do condemn! Wholeheartedly!” 

All in all, he wasn’t quite certain about his standing with Arthur, whether he’d greet his former king like an old friend or just go for the throat on sight. 

He’d stake his bets that _Gwaine_ would go for the latter. 

...or he would, if Gwaine were currently acting like any past version of himself that Elyan was familiar with.

This entire past week Gavin - Gwaine - had been acting, for lack of better term, downtrodden. And to an extent he could understand that, remembering your own death as if it happened yesterday is a bit of a bummer. But c’mon, this was _Gwaine_. The only thing that could ever dampen his electric personality was something happening to Merlin. Wait -

“How’s Merlin doing, by the way? Still asleep?” He tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, but talking about the health status of your immortal warlock friend is a bit more involved than a friendly chat about the weather.

Gwaine shrugged again. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “Jump-starting people’s memories takes a lot out of them. Lancelot says they should be fine after a good night’s sleep, though.” A stiff sip from the mug, and a pinched grimace suggesting that if not for his two-year sobriety chip then he’d already be down the bottle by now. Possibly several bottles.

“But he’ll be okay.”

Another goddamn shrug. “He was fine last time.”

“Is that why you’re not in there with him?”

Gwaine’s shoulders tightened, but he didn’t look up at Elyan despite clearly wanting to. “Not sure what you mean,” he mumbled into the rim of his mug. _Liar_.

“Don’t give me that,” Elyan said. Already, the change of topic - the ability to focus on something other than his own mind splitting at the seams - seemed to do wonders on his mood. “Back in Camelot you would’ve stayed at his bedside night and day! One time Merlin got stabbed while on patrol and you stuck around their chamber for a _full three days_ , until Gaius snuck a sleeping draught into your food and had Percival and I carry you to your room. Back in Camelot -”

_“This isn’t Camelot!”_

A harsh stillness swept over the kitchen. Even the sunlight faltered as it flitted through lace curtains. Elyan’s grip on his glass tensed, as with the rest of his muscles, as the sound of Gwaine’s raised voice invoked the sound of a thousand soldiers screaming as they died on the battlefield. 

To his credit, Gwaine seemed just as spooked. But instead of fumbling for his mug as Elyan had, he just shut his eyes and let his body sag like a particularly exhausted marionette. It looked like he was opening his mouth to apologize, maybe, but instead shut his lips into a grim line. His gaze remained ever fiercely locked on the white kitchen floor. 

Okay, now Elyan _knew_ something was up.

“Gwaine,” he implored, setting his glass into the sink before hopping up on the counter beside his...friend? The reincarnation thing may have complicated his relationships with everyone else, but rest assured that his friendship with Gwaine was universal. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Gwaine replied, but his response was a touch too snappish and they both knew it. His callused fingertips ran over the bulbous, misshapen face of Santa Claus sculpted into the mug’s side - perhaps an absent-minded tick, perhaps as a way to ground himself. Not that Elyan could blame him for trying to ground himself, of course. Lord knew _he_ needed constant reminders of his current time and place, lest the torrent of memories wash him far into the distant past.

The soft buzz of the fridge, clunking as ice cubes rattled around in the water dispenser’s freezer-box. The rough, splintery edges of the table, and the musty flower vase glinting rays of vague sunlight against its surface. The linoleum counter under him, cold and hard and still a bit sticky from that time he and Gwen spilled the honey jar a few weeks ago. The synthetic tug of his clothes, the zipper on his grey jacket, the mechanical stitching on his jeans, the colorful stripes on his socks, the purple nail polish that had begun to chip along his cuticles. 

All of this was modern. Digital. Contemporary. 21st-century. Camelot didn’t have shoelaces or electricity or family photos framed on the wall, therefore this could not be Camelot, therefore the compounding visions of Morgana and snakes and haunted swords and _snakes_ were merely bad memories.

Bad memories. Not real. In the past. Already happened. Meaning none of it could hurt him anymore. Morgana couldn’t…

Whatever. Not the point. Gwaine was the point right now.

“Don’t shut me out like that,” Elyan insisted, giving Gwaine’s shoulder a subtle nudge with his own. “You’re my friend, Gwaine - have been, in both lifetimes. And as much as I might’ve moaned and groaned about your talkativeness in...both lives…I do genuinely like hearing what you have to say.”

Gwaine snorted. 

“I’m serious! Whenever we went on a dangerous mission, you were always the one to lighten our spirits and keep us from getting all emo with each other.”

“Emo, huh?” He chuckled softly at that. Ever so slightly, a pulse of the old Gwaine injected back into those sunken, haunted features that had claimed his friend. 

Elyan crossed his arms. “New century, new words, new rules.” Elyan chuckled at bit too, tried not to revel too proudly in his minor success at making Gwaine smile, before pulling them back to the focus of the conversation. “I...never did thank you for that, did I? How you were, during the dorocha situation.” All his Camelot memories were simultaneously fresh and stale, like someone had peeled off a scab, and that only made his horror over the dorocha especially visceral. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Gwaine grunted. “Lancelot still died.”

“Yeah, but he got better.” Elyan jabbed a thumb in the direction of the guest room, where Lancelot was no doubt clutching Merlin by the hand and whispering reassurances to them. Or whatever it was that bleeding hearts like Lancelot did for their loved ones. 

(Because Lancelot definitely had it bad for Merlin, didn’t he. Elyan may not have recognized it back then, but this was 2019 and Elyan was a lot more ‘in the know’ about this sort of thing now. Lancelot happened to be pan, very much so, and he had the ability to fall madly in love with whomever was even mildly polite to him. He didn’t stand a chance against people like Gwen and Merlin.)

(And if he thought about it hard enough, Elyan was probably gay to some extent as well, but he’d rather not exceed his _One Life-Shattering Revelation Per Day_ quota by admitting that.)

Softly he added, “We _all_ got better.”

In a voice that was equally soft but far more miserable, so quiet and unpleasant that Elyan almost didn’t hear it at first, Gwaine whispered, “Did we, though?”

With a sickening clench of his gut, epiphany struck Elyan’s core. The haunted look in his eyes, the way his eyes darted about like a cornered animal when he thought no one was watching him, the shake of his hands, the way he startled at loud noises, the way he was never as loud and exuberant as he used to be...it all rang out in horrific clarity.

Tongue heavier than lead, Elyan dared bring voice to the dreaded question. “Gwaine...what happened after I died?”

Gwaine visibly stiffened, sucked in a sharp breath.

Bingo.

“I mean, I know _something_ happened.” The ‘something bad’ went unsaid, but they both heard it loud and clear. “And it’s obviously tearing you up. All my friends had to die eventually, right? And I know enough about the mythos to figure that Mordred…” His breath hitched. “...probably turned traitor and killed Arthur...but the rest are blanks.”

Mordred. Sweet and innocent Mordred, as much a little brother to him as Merlin was. The thought of someone so bright and wonderful and _good_ turning _evil_ was unfathomable, not to mention painful to consider. He could only hope his death wasn’t what pushed Mordred over the edge. Mordred _had_ once admitted to him that he tended to cope with loss by lashing out…

No. He couldn’t allow himself to think like that. He’d wait till they found and restored Mordred’s reincarnation, then let him explain himself. _Make_ him explain himself, if necessary.

“I have a right to know.”

For several long moments, Gwaine didn’t make a sound besides that of steady yet mildly panicky breaths. But it was okay. Elyan could wait him out. He didn’t spend two whole lifetimes growing up with Gwen “I Don’t Want To Burden You With My Problems” Smith to wind up being impatient about this sort of thing.

And after what must have been at least twenty years of just sitting there on the counter, his patience paid off. 

“What happened?” Gwaine rasped. “What happened is I betrayed everyone. Betrayed _Merlin_.”

And thus came forth form Gwaine’s lips a heartbreaking tale about Saxons and dragons and magical swords. About Mordred’s friend being executed and pushing him into Morgana’s sympathies. About Mordred stabbing Arthur with a magic sword, and Merlin carrying the king to a magic lake that was meant to heal him. About Gwaine and Percival acquiring enemy intel about Morgana and plotting to kill her. About Gwaine and Percival being captured by her, _tortured_ by her.

Elyan’s veins lit ablaze with the flames of a rough, raw memory. Held down, held captive, defiantly insisting that he would never let her break him, only for the worst agony imaginable to rip through his bones. Skin flaying and gnashing open and turning inside out and suctioning to his crumpled skeleton and boiling his eyes in their sockets and melting his tongue in his mouth and turning his fingertips to ash while blood mixes with venom and -

Feel the linoleum. Hear the refrigerator. Smell the honey and Windex. See the shoelaces. 

America, not Albion. The nathair couldn’t hurt him anymore.

“Everything goes dark after that,” Gwaine murmured, mug long abandoned beside him. “And when I wake up again, it’s the 21st century.”

There was nothing Elyan could say to that. No amount of “oof that sucks” could repair the fact that Gwaine had died and died horribly. Elyan could at least find some small spot of solace knowing he’d given his life to protect his sister. He could die knowing he’d succeeded.

“How can I -” Gwaine’s voice cracked, choking up on his own breath. “- how can I _face him_ , my oldest and closest friend, knowing I betrayed him? It’s my fault Morgana found out about his and Arthur’s location. If she hadn’t gone after them, if I hadn’t _told her_ , then maybe Arthur wouldn’t have died that day. Maybe magic would’ve been legalized, and…”

“Gwaine.” Elyan gently grabbed his shoulder to try and tilt Gwaine’s face into looking at him and seeing the earnest sincerity in Elyan’s features, but that only resulted in Gwaine turning his head to the side in a deliberate refusal of eye contact. “ _Gwaine_. You’re not to blame for this. It wasn’t your fault.”

Gwaine shrugged out of Elyan’s hold, gaze sullen and empty. “It kinda was, actually. It was _my_ idea to go after Morgana, even though we all knew it was stupid. It was _my_ words that led Morgana _straight to_ -”

“Alright, fine,” Elyan huffed. “You can make it your fault if you want. But if that’s your fault, then Morgana’s men attacking Ealdor was mine.”

For the first time in what must have twenty minutes, Gwaine finally dared to look up at him. His brows were scrunched and his face oozed with sympathy. “Elyan, she _tortured_ you. Gaius said that snake thing pulled you to the brink of human endurance. No one could’ve handled that.”

“Yeah, and she tortured _you_ too. Same snake and everything. Well, I guess even bog-witches have their hobbies.”

If such a thing were possible, Gwaine’s brow would’ve scrunched tighter.

Elyan gave him an expectant look. “Same snake, different victim. That’s all there is to it. So if you wanna blame yourself for succumbing to the pain and giving away Arthur and Merlin’s location, then you have to blame me too.”

“It’s different,” Gwaine insisted with a shake of his head. “No one died because of _your_ -”

The bitter words, “You’re wrong” escaped Elyan’s mouth before he could stop them. And by the time he realized what he’d said out loud, it was too late. Gwaine had heard him loud and clear. 

All of his past life as Elyan had been constantly bubbling to the forefront of his mind, ever since Merlin had cast that fancy spell of theirs. He could recall every instance of his life - chasing frogs with Leon and Gwen, catching fireflies in a glass jar and giving them names, leaving home and deliberately avoiding his dad’s funeral, becoming a knight, dying in Gwen’s lap - as though it had all happened just moments ago. 

Every moment both fond and miserable scored his brain with a fresh lashing of emotion, and there was so much happiness and grief and pain and confusion and fear rattling in his skull that it all ultimately canceled out and left him a bit numb. For stuff like his mother’s death and Gwen’s banishment, he was okay with that. The numbness was helping him process everything at a steady pace. 

But one memory that would never go numb, no matter how badly he wished it would, was that of the nathair incident. Not just when Morgana first plunged her snake into his body, scrapping his soul into tiny pathetic shreds that warbled out the words of every secret she demanded from him - but of the aftermath too. Because the aftermath is always the messiest part of trauma, as his therapist had once told him.

Y’know, the part where he spent a week locked in the cells with only a sickly Gaius and a bruised Gwaine for company, starving and catatonic from the sheer mind-melting pain he’d been forced to endure. Listening to his companions natter on about his condition, debating whether he was likely to recover or even survive at all. Wishing he could open his mouth and tell them he was alright and still conscious, he just couldn’t move without a thousand phantom pains lighting him up like the world’s worst Christmas tree.

Y’know, the part where he lied there on the cold cement, convinced he had doomed Merlin and Arthur to death, convinced that Camelot would fall and it would be his fault, convinced he would die without having ever made anything good out of himself.

Y’know, the part where Elyan finally learned how Morgana used the intel he’d provided for her.

“There was a body count in Ealdor.” He said it simply, shortly, quietly, because that was the only way he _could_ say it.

Elyan didn’t need to have known Gwaine for thirteen years across two different lifetimes to know what it meant when he widened his eyes like that. “Y-you mean -”

“Her name was Marcy.” And Elyan had to say it fast, or he’d never say it at all. “She was just eight years old. Didn’t stand a chance against Agravaine and his men.” He squished his eyes shut in the futile hopes that he could manually block the tears from falling out. He wasn’t entirely successful. “For two years, I nagged Merlin about it. I kept apologizing for snitching on them, kept asking them about what happened to Ealdor, whether everyone was alright, whether my actions had any consequences. And they - they’d just smile and tell me it was fine. That I did nothing wrong.”

Gwaine snorted, more than a little dejectedly, and his smile was as faded and worn as the knees on his ripped jeans. “That’s our Merlin, alright.”

“It wasn’t until that one trip we took to Ealdor - remember the one? Merlin wanted to visit their mother, but Arthur was convinced they’d get attacked by bandits along the way if they didn’t have a bunch of knights escorting them, and so he ordered us to tag along?” 

Again, another memory so close to his peripheral consciousness that he could almost choke on the vividness of it. Arthur hiding his concern for Merlin’s departure by pretending he’d enjoy the peace and quiet. Gwen handing them a basket of goods to give to Hunith. The knights all laughing and smiling on the ride there. Merlin occasionally sending knowing, worried glances towards Elyan that he could never quite decipher until it was too late. 

“That’s when I learned what happened,” Elyan said. “That’s when I met Marcy’s father, and learned how his daughter died.”

Gwaine opened his mouth, rebuttal dancing defiantly in his eyes. “But -”

“And don’t tell me it’s not the same, I know it’s not,” Elyan hissed, not intending for his words to come out like those of a desperate, dying man. “Arthur was already dying. From how it sounds, he probably would’ve died with or without Morgana there to push things along. But Marcy, she - she was young. Healthy. She had a long, h _-happy_ life ahead of her.”

“Elyan…” Anything Gwaine could have tried to say died on his tongue.

The two of them sat there, for a bit. Just sat there. No fancy words of consolation, no grand gestures of comfort. No solace, no reprieve, no sorry attempts at lightening the mood. Just two world-weary, reincarnated knights sitting on a linoleum countertop and trying not to squirm their way out of bodies that weren’t scarred enough to match their souls.

It was almost better that way, though, with the silence. Because Elyan didn’t have the energy in him to say anything, and he certainly didn’t have the energy to pick the torrent of flashbacks apart from anything Gwaine may have tried to say. The soft, subtle presence of Gwaine’s shoulder pressed against his own was more than enough. 

Because if Gwaine was sitting next to him then he wasn’t in Leon’s family estate, and he wasn’t in the Dark Tower, and he certainly wasn’t being tortured by Morgana. If Gwaine was wearing a zip-up hoodie and ripped jeans, then they weren’t knights on a quest, they weren’t attending a lavish royal banquet, and they definitely weren’t locked away in a dungeon, and they _definitely_ weren’t being tortured by an evil snake.

It was just him, 24-year-old med student Ethan Smith, sitting on the kitchen counter next to his childhood friend, exchanging silent camaraderie between themselves like it was some kind of dystopian currency. 

At long last, Gwaine broke the silence. “But _you_ survived.”

In lieu of an answer, Elyan let out a long sigh and rested the back of his head against the cabinet door. Its hard plastic handle dug into the base of his neck, but he didn’t bother moving. 

“It’s true, isn’t it? We were both…” Gwaine floundered for a moment, unable to bring voice to the word they were both thinking. “...we both got messed up by the same snake. But one of us was strong enough to survive it, and the other one wasn’t. I mean, if I hadn’t died, then I wouldn’t have left Merlin -”

“Oh come _on_ ,” he groaned. “Now you’re just grasping at straws. It’s like you’re _trying_ to find a reason to feel guilty.”

“Maybe I _deserve_ to feel guilty.”

Elyan exasperatedly threw his hands into the air. “I don’t know, maybe! Maybe you do deserve it! Maybe we’re both horrible, traitorous bastards who should’ve died before she could break us. I don’t know, and honestly I don’t care. Being miserable fixes _nothing_.”

Gwaine ran a hand through his hair. “Then what _will_?”

“How should I know? I made the same mistake back in Camelot that you’re making now. Which is exactly how I know that sitting in the dark and guilt-tripping yourself into oblivion isn’t a sustainable course of action.” Elyan took a deep breath. The air was cold, but his breath was warm. “As for what _will_ work, I guess we’ll just have to figure that one out together.”

Gwaine looked at him again, and although the echoes of trauma and pain still clapped across his gaze like bolts of lightning amidst a hazel storm, there was a spark of something else there too. 

Hope, perhaps. Hope that everything would eventually be alright.

A tall and lanky figure entered the kitchen, rubbing their eyes and yawning as they walked up to the fridge and pulled out the fancy Brita filter for a drink of water. The figure wore a baggy blue sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, and had a thin band of archaic letters tattooed around their wrists like bracelets. Their crow’s-feather hair was a disheveled mess atop their head, and their blue-gold eyes glinted in the soft, artificial glow of the refrigerator.

Gwaine’s whole body went stiff. Didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t breathe.

The figure pivoted on their heels, then froze in equal measure upon spotting Elyan and Gwaine on the counter. Stunned out of their drowsiness, they said, “Oh. Hey, guys.”

Gwaine looked like he’d combust out of sheer horror if he tried to speak, so Elyan covered. “Hey, Merlin. Feeling better?”

Merlin gave a squinty-eyed salute with the Brita. A few weeks ago when they’d first met - well, reunited - Elyan would get disgruntled at Merlin’s bizarre tendency to drink it right out the filter, without even pouring it into a glass first, like some kind of hobgoblin. Now he was just kinda indifferent. 

Like, c’mon. Magic was real and Elyan was secretly a reincarnated knight of the Round Table. Dragons could disguise themselves as talking dogs, those weird nightmares he got therapy for as a kid were actually just bits of PTSD inherited from his past life, and he was also supposed to help save the world somehow. The twinkified wizard from _Sword in the Stone_ chugging filter-water straight from the Brita seemed like a pretty damn low priority, all things considered. 

“Aces,” Merlin replied. In a show of solidarity, they hopped onto the counter opposite of Gwaine and Elyan. “And how about you, Elyan - or - or Ethan, not sure which name you’d -”

“Elyan is fine for now.” Maybe. Probably. He technically had more _Elyan_ memories than _Ethan_ memories rattling around in his brain pan, so he was suddenly more used to being Elyan, but this was all so confusing that his opinion on the matter could very well change. It was hard to say. “And...not terrible. Better than I was earlier, I guess.”

“You sure? I hear recovering your memories can leave some nasty headaches.”

Elyan shrugged. “Nothing a few Tylenols can’t fix.” Well, at the current rate of the pain between his temples, probably more than a _few_. But Merlin didn’t need to know that.

They furrowed their brow - a brow that usually had a studded piercing in it, because _“It’s been 1500 years, I’m well overdue for a punk phase”_ \- with suspicion, but seemed willing to let the white lie slide for now.

Merlin kicked their feet a bit, their heels thumping against the below-counter cabinets with every swing. “You alright, Gwaine?” 

Gwaine jolted in surprise, shimmery eyes darting up to meet Merlin’s.

Any instance where _Gwaine_ was this close to crying was instantly a Code Red situation. But to Merlin’s credit, they didn’t draw any overt attention to it, as Gwaine no doubt preferred.

“I mean,” Merlin teased, but no amount of levity could conceal the undercurrent of concern in their voice. “If anyone should be brooding and pensive right now, it’s Elyan -” 

“Hey!”

“- considering _he_ just had a whole second life of memories falcon-punched into his skull all at once.” 

Elyan cocked his head. “ _Falcon Punch?_ Did you just make a Smash reference?”

It took a while for Gwaine to gather himself well enough to speak, and Merlin sat patiently with their hands folded in their lap while they waited. Despite being a frenetic, animated person, they were somehow capable of turning into a stone freaking statue the moment it seemed like a Serious Emotional MomentTM was about to go down. Elyan both admired and envied it, because here he was squirming like a rowdy child while his best friend was going through a crisis.

In his defense, Elyan’s haphazard thoughts couldn’t seem to keep him grounded in reality for more than a few moments at a time. He was entitled to squirm as much as he liked, so long as it kept his brain from fluttering down Memory Lane again. He was here, he was mobile, he could move without hurting, and he could feel sensations that didn’t involve excruciating pain. Ipso facto, he wasn’t currently being tortured by Morgana’s Pet Snake From Hell, nor suffering the immediate aftermath of such an experience.

“I’m okay,” Gwaine said at long last, as though even he was surprised at his own answer. 

Merlin’s voice came off as unconvinced yet hopeful. “Really?

A breathy chuckle. “Yeah, actually.” He shot a brief look in Elyan’s direction, and Elyan hurried to give him an encouraging nod before he could look away. “Doing better than I have in a long while.”

There was a smile on Gwaine’s face. It trembled slightly, but it was there nonetheless. Elyan couldn’t help but smile too.

It was 2019. He was in his kitchen. And though the howls of trauma echoed between his temples, he needed only knock his knee against Gwaine’s to know what was real. 

Yeah. Better. They were doing better.

**Author's Note:**

> This was just supposed to be a 2k practice to help me get back into writing, and as you can see it blew way out of hand. Frankly too tired to edit atm. If you've made it this far into the fic, I admire your tenacity. 
> 
> Have a nice day! <3


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